That was one big train show. Four ( I think) buildings, two really large of nothing but train stuff.
There were a number of tool booths I loved and got hemostats of various types, little screw grabbers, 100 packs of xacto blades and a pounce wheel. Then corrugated metal and paper roofing from NE Scale Lumber along with sash windows doors and loading dock gates. . They had a lot of 8 inch wide scored bass wood sheet that I have trouble getting. I did not get to meet Alan (Espee) but I did get a bunch of really subtle weathering paints from the Iwata booth. They had really nice stuff! Then a few vehicles, an old micro bus and a school bus. I also got the book on "The Gorre & Daphetid Railroad of John Allen's. The last thing was to join the NMRA. At that point my budget was officially blown.
There were some great displays by several 1/87th vehicle modeling associations. Nothing of it was for sale and they took a lot of space. Just great vehicles with guys sitting behind the tables but not engaging with anyone at all.
Alan was holding forth with full groups participating in airbrush demos. All these guys with little blue latex gloves hanging on his every word and stroke. He really held their attention. In the next demo area people were cutting away sprues on design preservation materials buildings. The woman describing the process of how to not get killed by an xacto knife blade were pretty funny. She was seriously worked up about the certainly of a painful death from a #11 blade.
The Amherst Train society sponsors the whole thing and I got toured around for a while by one of their good representatives. He said the Big E show is the largest of its type in the country. I could not beleive that many people in New England liked trains. He said 25,000 would come through the doors in the two days.
There were a lot of Lionel dealers there with a lot of old parts. If someone were doing 3 rail O gauge, it was heaven. There were tons of RTR cars, tons of motive power in HO and in N. Major players had booths. Walthers, Kadee, Broadway Limited. Tony's had two guys doing nothing but soldering in DCC chips for engines while people waited in line. All at full retail for the most part, so pricey. There were a number of booths selling used rolling stock in HO and Lionel and there were very nice deals to be had that way. Really very little in Scratch building materials though. I looked in vain for a supplier of Aluminum and brass stock from KS industries and never could find them, The show directory did not break down the vendors in any meaningful way and that made it really difficult to find specific things.
But all in all, It was worth the 400 miles roundtrip! It would have been easy to stay the two days but my horses get really pissy when they don't eat. Not a good thing. They just up and leave.
Pete VanderLaan
There were a number of tool booths I loved and got hemostats of various types, little screw grabbers, 100 packs of xacto blades and a pounce wheel. Then corrugated metal and paper roofing from NE Scale Lumber along with sash windows doors and loading dock gates. . They had a lot of 8 inch wide scored bass wood sheet that I have trouble getting. I did not get to meet Alan (Espee) but I did get a bunch of really subtle weathering paints from the Iwata booth. They had really nice stuff! Then a few vehicles, an old micro bus and a school bus. I also got the book on "The Gorre & Daphetid Railroad of John Allen's. The last thing was to join the NMRA. At that point my budget was officially blown.
There were some great displays by several 1/87th vehicle modeling associations. Nothing of it was for sale and they took a lot of space. Just great vehicles with guys sitting behind the tables but not engaging with anyone at all.
Alan was holding forth with full groups participating in airbrush demos. All these guys with little blue latex gloves hanging on his every word and stroke. He really held their attention. In the next demo area people were cutting away sprues on design preservation materials buildings. The woman describing the process of how to not get killed by an xacto knife blade were pretty funny. She was seriously worked up about the certainly of a painful death from a #11 blade.
The Amherst Train society sponsors the whole thing and I got toured around for a while by one of their good representatives. He said the Big E show is the largest of its type in the country. I could not beleive that many people in New England liked trains. He said 25,000 would come through the doors in the two days.
There were a lot of Lionel dealers there with a lot of old parts. If someone were doing 3 rail O gauge, it was heaven. There were tons of RTR cars, tons of motive power in HO and in N. Major players had booths. Walthers, Kadee, Broadway Limited. Tony's had two guys doing nothing but soldering in DCC chips for engines while people waited in line. All at full retail for the most part, so pricey. There were a number of booths selling used rolling stock in HO and Lionel and there were very nice deals to be had that way. Really very little in Scratch building materials though. I looked in vain for a supplier of Aluminum and brass stock from KS industries and never could find them, The show directory did not break down the vendors in any meaningful way and that made it really difficult to find specific things.
But all in all, It was worth the 400 miles roundtrip! It would have been easy to stay the two days but my horses get really pissy when they don't eat. Not a good thing. They just up and leave.
Pete VanderLaan
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